VISTA  The public debut this week of Mission Vista High School achieved quite an accomplishment: It has made students during summer vacation want to start school.

“I’m really excited about going back to school, and that is a first,” said Brooke Schendar, 15, who will be in 10th grade in the fall.

Parents and students oohed and aahed Monday as they perused Vista Unified School District’s newest high school, the first public tour of the $100 million, 66-acre campus at Melrose Avenue and Highway 76. Classes start Aug. 23.

More than 500 students have signed up for the campus’ ninth and 10 grades, including about 230 students who attended the school’s inaugural class last year, held on the campus of Washington Middle School. The school will have a junior class during the 2011-2012 school year and seniors the following year.

“This campus is worth every penny,” said Marci Grihalva, whose daughter, Syndey, will be a ninth-grader. “It’s a campus that you definitely can be proud of.”

Mission Vista was paid for mostly from a $140 million school construction bond voters passed in 2001.

More than 400 people attended Monday’s event, which allowed visitors to tour classrooms, a performing arts theater, gymnasium and athletic fields and other buildings.

The campus is more than 98 percent complete, district officials said. Crews are working to furnish the classrooms and fill libraries and labs with computers and books, Principal Rodney Goldenberg said.

Still, the bare version of the campus awed visitors, with some comparing the new school to a small college.

Mission Vista High School faced several obstacles in its development, including cost increases and legal wrangling — the school district recently settled its lawsuit against a now-defunct developer over the lack of some utilities — that caused it to fall more than 18 months behind schedule.

The school was scheduled to open in 2009, but the campus did not have a main sewer line or access to other utilities.

All that seems in the distance, several faculty members said, as the anticipation leading up to the school’s first day is palpable.

“I think it’s great for our sophomores, who were ready to go to a high school campus,” Goldenberg said.

Brooke was one of those students.

“I’ve only seen the inside of one building so far, the library,” she said. “But that will end up being my favorite place, because I really love books.”